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Women’s chances of developing cancer after menopause increase with their height, according to a
new study.

Among nearly 145,000 women between the ages of 50 and 79, researchers found that height was more
strongly associated with cancer than such factors as obesity.

The association held true for everything from thyroid cancer to melanoma, researchers reported
in
Cancer Epidemiology,Biomarkers and Prevention.

It’s not height itself that’s the risk factor, though. The study authors say height “should be
thought of as a marker for one or more exposures that influence cancer risk.”

“Things going on in early life appear to feed into a process that may increase the risk for
various cancers,” said Geoffrey Kabat, lead author of the study and a senior epidemiologist at
Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Those things might include diet as well as hormones that contribute to normal growth.

Cancer involves the uncontrolled division of abnormal cells in processes having to do with
growth, so it follows that hormones or other growth factors that influence height may influence
cancer risk, Kabat said.

Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public
Health, said the study should not raise alarm for the tall, though it does provide evidence that
greater height is associated with cancer.

“The increase in risk is modest and is balanced by a lower risk of cardiovascular disease in
taller people,” Willett, who was not involved in the study, said in an email. “Research to
understand the reason for the extra risk in taller people may lead us to new ways to prevent or
treat cancer.”

The postmenopausal women in the study were participants in the Women’s Health Initiative, a
15-year research program established in 1991 by the National Institutes of Health and other
agencies to address the most common causes of death, disability and poor quality of life.

Altogether, the researchers tracked 144,701 women for an average of 12 years, during which
20,928 of them developed new cancers.